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Is Your Silver-based Thermal Paste Really Silver?
strider69666 writes "Over at Overclockers.com they have a review of several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content. 'I decided to test Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound, and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease. This test was not conducted to test performance, but rather to determine if these compounds have Silver as an ingredient.' Using a professionally mixed testing solution, they found that several brands do not, in fact, contain any silver at all! So, are you getting what you are paying for?"
Who cares who's selling what? The TRUE geek makes his own from a brick of silver.
In my day we had to make thermal paste by grinding it down with stones.
No, mine isn't. And by the way, despite the claims of the manufacturer, Soylent green is not 100% people. Quit believing advertising, and you will be just fine. Better yet, take up spectroscopy as a hobby. Chicks dig spectroscopes!
Who do all these people who are concerned about false labelling go to for enforcement?
This sig no verb.
This is not surprizing at all as silver is expensive. Oh wait; what the fuck?
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
http://www.ocztechnology.com/displaypage.php?name= recall
From the above site:
OCZ would like to take this time to address the recent article published at Overclockers.com, ( http://www.overclockers.com/articles938/ )which shows that OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound has no silver content.
OCZ does not manufacture Ultra 2 thermal compound in house, it is provided by a foreign manufacturer with our specifications. Previous independent lab tests conducted at the request of OCZ have shown that the silver compound content in Ultra 2 is 25% by volume and 70% by weight.
In response to this article, OCZ has submitted another batch of Ultra 2 to a third party for extensive lab testing. This Independent lab report show's that the most recent batch of OCZ Ultra 2 indeed contains less than 1% silver by volume. While simultaneously we have received lab reports from an outside source indicating the silver content to be 30% by weight. This leads us to the conclusion that recent batch(s) of OCZ Ultra 2 from our supplier did not meet the agreed specifications.
We accept full responsibility for these problems and we will be seeking legal action against our supplier.
In order to help solve this problem we have contacted Arctic Silver Inc, and entered into a vendor agreement with them to supply OCZ thermal paste.
Beginning January 22nd 2004 we are issuing a full recall of any and all OCZ Ultra 2.
Any Customers who wish to return OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste with an invoice will in exchange for their full or partially used tube(s) receive:
1- One (dependant on # of tubes returned) 3-gram OCZ thermal Compound (made by Arctic Silver Inc.) or one OCZ Dominator 2 Heatsink.
2- One OCZ EL DDR T-Shirt
3- One 10 dollar off rebate on any OCZ EL DDR Dual Channel Kit (at participating resellers)
When someone buys 'Silver' thermal paste, are they paying for silver, or for performance? I don't buy the platinum edition of a game and feel jipped because the CD held little to no platinum.
...compusa meant that it was 99% silver - the /color/.
thank you, thank you. i'll be here all night. tip your wait staff.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Is silver toxic? I thought the tube that came with my athlon fan was complementary tootpaste!
The price of silver today at market close was about 6.20 USD per ounce. Not that expensive considering what these products cost.
I want a free goddam coffee and an apple pie right now or I'll sue!
Now THAT'S how damage control should work. The company took full responsibility and is offering a generous compensation.
It is disturbing that they had not caught this earlier, but I think that they are more than making up for their shortcomings.
I wish more organizations worked like this. Good word of mouth goes a long way on the Internet - see New Egg's success as an example.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
You're telling me a site on overclocking has to cut off the user limit? Their servers aren't overclocked enough to handle it?
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
makes *his* from a brick of Tin. So suck it punk!
Beginning January 22nd 2004 we are issuing a full recall of any and all OCZ Ultra 2.
Any Customers who wish to return OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste with an invoice will in exchange for their full or partially used tube(s) receive:
1- One (dependant on # of tubes returned) 3-gram OCZ thermal Compound (made by Arctic Silver Inc.) or one OCZ Dominator 2 Heatsink.
2- One OCZ EL DDR T-Shirt
3- One 10 dollar off rebate on any OCZ EL DDR Dual Channel Kit (at participating resellers)
Sounds cool, but how many people will have saved a receipt?
This isn't too far fetched. They could be getting systematicly ripped-off by their suppliers too.
Just a little screw-up at the (prob. offshore) supplier, I'm sure that OCZtech will be checking ALL the future batches...at least for another week or so.
Now would be the best time to get a tube. This weeks batch will prob. be right on the spec.
The silver crayons don't claim to have 99% silver contained in them. The compusa compound and the ocz compound claimed they did.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Comp USA brand silver thermal grease is, indeed, marketed as having silver content. Not just silver coloring, but, explicitly, silver content. Take a look at this before they take it down: compusa.com Product Listing.
In addition, the author claims that similar claims were made on the label of OCZ paste. Judging by the reaction from the people at OCZ (or the people that claim to be OCZ) and his accuracy in the rest of the test, I have no reason to doubt him.
Please, think before you spout the tired, cynical rhetoric about shady advertisement.
Silver is better conductor than copper, and certainly a better conductor than aluminum!
e xt/Ag/key.html
"Pure silver has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all metals, and possesses the lowest contact resistance"
From http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/t
"SILVER THERMAL PASTES - BUYERS BEWARE!"
Silversinksam - 1/21/04
I decided to test Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound, and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease. This test was not conducted to test performance, but rather to determine if these compounds have Silver as an ingredient.
All Testing was done twice, once on a jeweler's acid free 'Black stone', and the test was repeated on paper. The testing solution was Nitric acid and Muriatic acid that was pre-mixed professionally.
The tests produced some very disturbing results:
OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver compound and the CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease has ZERO silver in it.
The testing solution stayed orange - if it had any silver in it, the acids would turn varying degrees of red, depending on the purity of the silver present. OCZ claims that OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver compound is, "Made with 99.9% pure micronized silver, Over 70% silver content by weight".
I cannot concur and my tests conclusively show that there is Zero micronized silver present, and Zero silver content by weight.
Arctic Silver 3 and Arctic Silver 5 were also tested and both produced a blood red color, indicating 90% - 100% purity of Silver in both Arctic Silver 3 and Arctic Silver 5. Arctic Silver's claim of, "Contains 99.9% pure silver" by my testing is accurate and of the compounds tested, only Arctic Silver products produced results showing that Silver is in fact present.
The tubes in the picture below from left to right, Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3, OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound and CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease.
In picture 3 below, from left to right is Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver 3 and OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound. The compounds were placed on the paper and the acid was place on the compound undisturbed. Notice how the acid drop placed on the OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound remains orange, indicating zero silver present:
When you go into a jewelry store and buy a sterling silver or a fine silver necklace, you expect the jewelry to be made of sterling or fine silver. The same should apply to silver thermal pastes - if the silver paste has no silver in it and the manufacturer says it does, that is misleading.
Based on my testing, I can not recommend OCZ Ultra II Premium Silver Compound or CompUSA Silver Thermal Grease, as they are both misleading products with zero silver in them. If you want a product that actually has silver as an ingredient, Arctic Silver 3, Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Silver Adhesive tested OK.
Ed Note: Silversinksam's conclusions have been verified by an independent testing laboratory - details will follow in Part 2 of this article.
Silversinksam
Check out some of the heatsink companies websites, thermaltake etc, to get some graphs and such about the heating properties of their products.
Toms does regular heatsink comparisons, and the copper always beats out the alu of the same type.
The overclocking thing bewilders me. These overclockers only push there cpu's to the limit so they can see a performance gain in the latest version of Quake.
You can't overclock a cpu on a pc or a server that has any real use what-so-ever.
Imagine overclocking the cpu on you employers mail server, then it becomes unstable and corrupts half the data!
-Haxx
Actually, silver is a better thermal conductor than copper or aluminum. IIRC, it goes:
(In Watts per meter per degree Kelvin)
Silver ~420 W/mK
Pure Copper ~400 W/mK)
Pure Aluminum ~240 W/mK)
If you REALLY wanted some fancy shit, try a diamond paste. Diamond is like 2000+ W/mK. Really good at transfering heat. (No, I don't know if anyone actually makes the stuff).
Oh, and just for reference, air is about 0.025 w/mK, and water is somewhere around 0.6ish.
So you could use a copper paste, but it wouldn't be quite as good as the Silver.
"no acutally gold has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all metals. that is why it is used in microchips"
Please, someone tell me what is the point of blabbing misinformaton about things of which you are utterly ignorant?
Silver has far higher thermal conductivity than gold.
Gold, 320 W/m/K
Silver 430 W/m/K
To the extent gold is used in microchips, it is for other reasons.
IIRC, copper conducts heat better than silver... why not make a copper paste
Copper is a great conductor of heat, but not as good as silver.
Copper: 402 k(W/mK) @ 300 kelvin
Silver: 430 k(W/mK) -- 7% better (in certain conditions).
Diamond beats them all at 895 k(W/mK).
Actually, there's a superfluid form of Helium-2 which, at already very low temperatures, blows anything else away in terms of heat conductivity. Of course, since it has to already be near absolute zero in temperature to have reasonably thermal conductivity, it would probably not make the best thermal "grease."
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
As other have mentioned, this is wrong. Silver is the best conductor, followed by copper, then gold. (see http://hypertextbook.com/physics/electricity/resis tance/ for more details)
What gold does do best is resist corrosion, which is why it is often used for connectors. Silver and copper both oxidize very rapidly, causing bad connections, but gold does not.
Heat sink goop is a terrible conductor of heat. It is actually a very good insulator of heat.
Here is a measure of the heat conductivity of some stuff (watts/in. degree C)
air - 0.00076
nylon - 0.00635
heat sink goop - 0.0168
brick - 0.0175
glass - 0.02
silver heat sink goop - 0.0282
alumina - 0.7
steel - 1.7
silicon - 2.5
brass - 3.05
aluminum - 5.5
gold - 7.4
copper - 10.0
silver - 10.6
diamond - 16.0
Note that any heat sink goop is a terrible conductor of heat. The only thing it is better than basically is air. Thus, heat sink goop is only to be used to fill microscopic voids between the heat sink and the CPU. If you actually have a layer of it between the heatsink and the CPU it will insulate the chip a LOT and make it overheat.
Thus, there is no reason to use a lot of heatsink goop, it isn't critical that you use good goop. It is VERY CRITICAL that you have good enough heatsink pressure that your heatsink and CPU come in direct contact, with as much as possible heat sink goop squeezed out. There shouldn't even be a visible film of it after heat sink removal, just small pockets in the imperfections on the chip.
Oh, all these figures are stolen from "Hot Air Rises and Heat Sinks: Everything You Know About Cooling Electronics is Wrong" by Tony Kordyban. The book, BTW is just okay. I don't really recommend it to the average person.
"Silver is the best conductor ... Gold is the next best conductor, AFAIK, and doesn't tarnish."
No, actually silver is #1, copper is #2, and gold is #3.
Silver 430 W/m/K
Copper 400 W/m/K
Gold 320 W/m/K
Aluminum 235 W/m/K
Dan says it works real good.
all you posters saying "whats the problem" are missing the point, people pay a premium for silver paste becuase it supposedly contains enough silver to provide better heat conductivity. it's marketed as such and really, infomation should be made avaiable as to the silver content.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Didja know that those silver candy balls used on cupcakes have real silver? Check the label next time you see a container of them. They don't seem to be legal anymore in CA, TX, CO, NJ, AZ, and FL. Darn, and so tasty!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
OCZ issued a recall of the paste http://www.ocztechnology.com/displaypage.php?name= recall
IRC, copper conducts heat better than silver...
Last time I checked, that isn't the case. Silver has the best thermal conductivity of all elemental metals (at least all common ones - I don't actually have an extensive list in front of me). Slightly, but not drastically, better than that of copper. And with respect to other to other responses to the parent, the conductivity of aluminum, while better than, say, steel, pales in comparison to that of copper or silver.
See FrostyTech, or Tom's Hardware if you don't believe me.
The use of aluminum is a consequence of price and of system requirements. You can cool a Pentium II, for instance, adequately with an aluminum heatsink because it doesn't put out as much heat. Modern processors, on the other hand, put out more watts of energy which needs to be rapidly sucked away from the cpu and dissipated, so a heatsink with a copper core at the very least tends to be the norm.
Why don't we see more silver heatsinks? Price, of course. Copper is already relatively expensive, but a big block of high purity silver is out of the price range of most people. At that point water cooling probably has a better price performance ratio.
The angel in the oatmeal.
2 pack; 97% pure micronized silver
75-80% silver content by weight
(from CompUSA's website, regarding said silver compound)
Wouldn't it be funny if CompUSA responded with:
"Our product is advertised correctly. Before micronization, the silver that was used was rated at 97% percent pure. The silver was then put through our micronization process and added to a substrate to create our product compound."
When asked what substrate was used
"The substrate is a a type of aerogel."
Well that would explain why the compound is 70%-80% silver by weight!
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
http://silicon.wack.us/sdmirror/tpaste/ just in case it goes down
Natural-Selection Be
How else are we supposed to protect our PC's from werewolves?!
Actually this lady blew all the thermal pastes out of the water! Better than copper,silver,gold,diamond, or carbon-nanotubes!
working in a local mom in pop type store some dude
came in wanting help getting his heatsink off.
Sure enough that baby was stuck tighter than a frogs ass. I asked "did you install this?" "yep! I
put it on with JB-WELD for a nice snug fit."
Yeah and remind me to sue crayola too for not including any real silver in their silver crayons, those damned cheapskates.
From CompUSA's product info:
97% pure micronized silver
75-80% silver content by weight
I sure as hell don't remember any of my crayons saying "micronized silver." Which is probably just as well, considering how much we used to chew on them.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I mean, c'mon people! Use some logic!
For best results, put heatsinks on the fans to cool the air more. You might want to point a fan at the fan, too. Actually, if you did this enough times, you could reach absolute zero or even absolute -10.
This isn't rocket smarts, guys.
I don't care what element they are made out of; all I care about is that they work. If I was buying jewelry I might feel differently, but thermal paste is something you apply once and never see again. All that should matter is its performance. Then again, this could be considered false advertising, which would bother some people. But as long as it does its job, I don't care.
Also, IANAMS (I am not a materials scientist), but the liquid test agents they're using may not work if the silver is in certain molecular compounds. The best way to examine these thermal pastes would be with a scanning electron microscope. I had the priledge of using one at NIST (National Institute for Standards in Technology located in Maryland), and we examined a ring and used some sort of technique to determine that the band of the ring had 75% atomic numbers of 79 and 25% atomic numbers of 29 and the jewel of the ring had 100% atomic number of 6. (We saw all of these as relative heights in a graph of some sort of spectrum). Needless to say, the ring was 18 carat Gold (24 carat = 100%) and the diamond was real. This immensely relieved the husband, whose wife's ring had been the one examined.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
OCZ would like to take this time to spin doctor a recent article published at Overclockers.com, which shows that OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound has no silver content.
It is not really OCZ's fault, we don't actually make the stuff. OCZ is a victum just like you! Someone in China did it and we couldn't have possibly known because we outsourced our quality control as well. This required us to trust a single independent lab test to be representive of the quality of all batches of OCZ Ultra 2 thermal compound.
Now that we have been caught with our pants down, we have submitted a second batch to our outsourced quality control and confirmed that it is all China's fault. But we would like to point out that the compound did contain 30% silver by weight. We have reached the conclusion that this recent batch (actually, it might be multiple batchs but we can't afford to test each one to be sure) did not meet with the OCZ unenforced specifications.
Instead of giving your money back, we will define the steps below as "accepting full responsiblity" and would like to point out that we are taking legal action since it really is China's fault.
Beginning today we are issuing an incomplette recall of all full or partially used OCZ Ultra 2 (if you still have an empty OCZ Ultra 2 then your S.O.L. and get nothing).
1) The tube which now sells for $9 on NewEgg (and we would like to point out that the Tech Zone rated as cooling 2 degrees C below Arctic Silver) can be exchanged for Arctic Silver which you could have just bought for $7 -OR- you can get a OCZ heat sink that we need to get rid of anyways since it is discontinued!
But wait... there is more...
2) A one-size-fits-all T-shirt featuring the OCZ logo so you can be a walking advertizement for OCZ until it falls apart the third time you wash it. The fact that there is not the cotten/polyester blend we specified can not be OCZ's fault because after all... OCZ does not have it's own quality assurence and in the end everything is China's fault.
Oh... but wait... there is even more...
3) $10 off another of our products which also comes complette with no quality assurence!
Thank you for getting scre... doing business with OCZ. Remember, if it is not OCZ technology then you might actually be getting what you payed for.
From the Slashdot article:
Over at Overclockers.com they have a review of several thermal compounds that claim to have 99% pure silver content.
The claim is that the silver content is 70% by weight, and that the silver used is 99.9% pure. Not that the compounds have 99% silver content,
If you want 99% silver on top of your CPU, try spreading some silverware on top of it.
I fried my cpu and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
Quit believing advertising, and you will be just fine
"Contains 90% silver" is a simple and testable claim, and clearly not just ad-speak. There are laws against outright lies on the box of any product in most countries. This is a good thing.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Too much compound will also actually insulate the chip rather than cool it
Good advice. This may be stating the obvious, but the perfect thermal junction between a chip and a heatsink is NOTHING, i.e. both of them perfectly flat, with every single atom touching. In the real world, surfaces have flaws and air gets in between. Air is a very poor conductor of heat. So we have thermal compound, which is beter than air, and more malleable than the two surfaces could be.
Don't use much of the stuff AT ALL. When you squeeze the two surfaces together, you just want a thin film of compound fillling in the areas where the two surfaces don't touch. If it squishes out the sides, you used too much.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
... not a metallic element they are refering to? It looks "silver."
...
... )
You know, uh, like, uh "orange" paint isn't really made from oranges, it's just that color
Yeah! that's it!
(And if you believe that
--
Tomas
This is offtopic, so I hope I don't go to mod hell..
.. tons and tons and tons.
Silver is cheap. Beyond cheap. Its everywhere.
I know this because I make and sell silver jewelry. Scrap silver is essentially worthless.
I have about 30lbs of 92.5 sitting here in a bucket that I will eventually melt down. And about 10 pounds of fine silver (99.9). Its simply not worth even trying to do anything with at this point.
And that silver boom that is supposedly coming...
I'll believe it when I see it.
Do you know how much silver US customs has in its possession? Tons
The reason for this is, if something is imported into the United States, and it is stamped as 95.5, and customs tests any particular piece in that shipment, (regardless of whether it is a small bag, or a container full) and it comes out to something LESS than 92.5% pure, they melt the WHOLE shipment down. Do what you want with it.
And trust me, they *do* test.
Which, come to think of it, could be a way to stop this type of thing, but I thing that "melting it down" only applies to items that are stamped. And silver paste obviously is not stamped. But there is a possibility it is still controlled as precious or semi-precious metals. I'll ask my customs broker next time I talk to her.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
Who cares if it contains silver or not.
People care about it because if something claims to be 99% silver then it should damn well have some silver in it. Otherwise it is false advertising which is illegal.
The purpose of a heat sink is to .. radiate heat - not to look good on your wrist.
Which is exactly why you want it to contain silver, silver is one of the best conducters of heat there is. And you want it to conduct heat, not radiate it, the heatsink is to radiate the heat, the thermal transfer compound is just there to transfer the heat from the core to the heatsink.
Why wouldn't you want copper?
Copper is much cheaper.
Silver only conducts 10% better then copper.
Plus making sure you have a good contact by itself will do a lot just by itself.
They should run them at a safe, drinkable temperature.
In my day all we had was this damn turtle.
You had a turtle? We plunged forever into the nothingness of pure void. Uphill. Both ways.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
Well, several hospilizations later, at least I know why my super soaker filled with 'silver' thermal paste was having no effect upon the local lycanthropes. Damn you, false advertisers.
I see this as being the issue with the Silver as well. Though it seems in some cases theyy couldn't find any, though maybe the microgram of 99.99% pure silver that they added to it was to minut to detect?
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
"Made with 99.9% pure micronized silver"
The half ounce of micronized silver they added to the 4000 gallon batch of silver colored grease was 99.9% pure.
Much in the same way that Made with real fruit juices doesn't gaurentee there's any reasonable ammount of fruit juices in it. Marketing at it's worst.
Which is exactly why you want [the thermal transfer compound] to contain silver, silver is one of the best conducters of heat there is.
Have you checked out Dan's Data on thermal greases? He does a very nice comparison between Artic Silver 3, Cooler Master PTK-001 and HTK-001, Nanotherm "Ice" and "Blue", and... Toothpaste and Vegimite. While Dan may be quite mad, even for an Aussie, there is definitely method to his madness. After measuring the effects on cooling with his usual methods... the difference amounts to diddly-squat. And yes, that includes the difference between Artic Silver 3 and Toothpaste. (Actually, toothpaste was marginally superior.)
So, yeah, there may not be much point to getting too upset if you've gotten thus screwed-- it probably won't make jack-all difference in your system.
On the other hand, it is definitely immoral and almost certainly illegal to claiming "99.9% silver content" when you mean "99.9% silver free". While it was probably a harmless scam (and probably saved this disreputable company some chump change in manufacturing their overpriced goop), whatever Three-Letter-Agency has jurisdiction should probably come down on these folk like a ton of old hard drives on the principle of the matter.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.